Stop the Zionist witch-hunt

KEN Livingstone’s resignation from the Labour Party and the sacking of a Hammersmith council worker for expressing pro-Palestinian views at a Jewish Voice for Labour demonstration in March are part of a vicious Zionist and Blairite campaign to drive supporters of the Palestinian cause out of the Labour Party.

Livingstone may not have been the most articulate advocate of Palestinian rights. Stan Keable, who was sacked after 17 years of unblemished service for stating his opinion of Zionists in his own time, holds cranky socialist views that have never won much support within the Labour Representation Committee or the wider labour movement in London. But none of this can possibly justify their persecution.

Years ago, when Tony Benn called Labour the “broad church” of the labour movement, all sorts of views were tolerated within it. Even now Labour officially upholds the rights of free speech and freedom of expression – which is seen by the anti-communist and anti-Arab drivel that’s spouted by the Zionists and their venal right-wing allies without censure within the Labour Party today. But these days prominent campaigners for justice for Palestine are being branded as “anti-semites” by the Blairite clique that controls Labour’s bureaucracy with the support of the right-wing bloc of Labour MPs in alliance with the Zionist movement and the blessing of the bourgeois media.

The Labour Representation Committee recently said: “those who accuse Labour Party members of antisemitism very often do so because of Corbyn’s and other left wingers’ support for the Palestinian cause. Their target is ultimately Jeremy Corbyn, a decades-long advocate of Palestinian rights. Their aim is to peel off and neutralise as many of his supporters as possible, and ultimately to go after Corbyn. Don’t forget his leadership is still under siege. In 2016 172 Labour MPs passed a vote of no confidence in him. Though his impressive show in the 2017 election made him invulnerable for the time being, they still lay low and plot what harm they can do to Corbyn and Labour”.

In 1975 the UN General Assembly classified Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. In 1991 the General Assembly, under pressure from US imperialism, revoked the resolution – a condition set by Israel in return for participation in the ‘Madrid Peace Conference’ which was supposedly going to resolve the Palestinian problem. Needless to say there is still no justice for the Palestinians and Zionism is still a reactionary and racist ideology.

Zionists maintain that the “Jewish question” is “eternal,” “unique,” and beyond class considerations. Zionists utilise every means to propagandise the false idea of class peace between Jewish workers and the Jewish bourgeoisie. All forms of class struggle among Jews are proclaimed to be national treason. The Zionists have always made use of demagogy and tactical manoeuvres in their efforts to conceal the anti-popular, reactionary essence of Zionism, alleging that Zionism is the “national liberation movement of Jews throughout the world.”

Zionism’s main policy has always been one of struggle, both open and covert, against socialism, the international communist and national liberation movements, and the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. Immediately after the victory of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, Zionism unleashed an active struggle against the new Soviet state. After the Second World War, amid a further intensification of the overall crisis of capitalism, the anticommunism and anti-Sovietism of international Zionism assumed still broader dimensions

Marxists have always repudiated the theory and practice of Zionism. Lenin exposed the reactionary essence of Zionism, emphasising that its dogmas are reactionary, false, and contrary to the interests of the Jewish proletariat. He criticised the Zionists’ theses concerning the unique nature of the Jewish people, the alleged absence of class differences among the Jews, and the imaginary communality of their interests, explaining that such assertions aimed to distract Jewish workersfrom the proletariat’s common class struggle.
Exposing the Zionists and the Blairites is not enough. We must challenge these reactionary forces head-on throughout the labour movement.

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